


The Noble Hunter's Daughter

by Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold (manka)



Series: A Killer and a Liar Walk into the Inquisition: The Love Story of Kenna Cadash and Thom Rainier [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Courtesans, Dwarf Culture & Customs, F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Inquisitor's Family - Freeform, Meeting the Parents, Noble Hunters, Orzammar Culture and Customs, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26188384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manka/pseuds/Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold
Summary: Hanelle Cadash comes to Skyhold after the Inquisition manages to extract her from under the Dasher's thumb. Blackwall gets to learn more about Kenna's past.
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Cadash (Dragon Age), Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Kenna Cadash
Series: A Killer and a Liar Walk into the Inquisition: The Love Story of Kenna Cadash and Thom Rainier [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897177
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

“My lady, your mother is here.” Josephine declared smoothly, sailing into the room in a rustle of gold silk as if she hadn’t dropped a grenade into the silence. “The tower solarium has been made into a room for her, per your instructions, would you…” 

Kenna didn’t wait for the rest of the report. She bolted up so quickly she spilled the pot of ink all over her meager attempts at writing. She abandoned it, racing through the great hall, sending a noble squawking as she dashed past. 

Her mother. She hadn’t seen her mother in two years. 

Kenna didn’t stop, even as her lungs burned, scrambling ungracefully down the stone steps. She didn’t stop until she jumped from the bottom step, landing lightly in the muddy courtyard, eyes lighting on the small figure on the arm of a willowy human woman in Inquisition armor. 

Her mother’s blonde hair gleamed in the sun like honey in a jar. She still wore it in the ornate, heavy braids so fashionable among the nobles in Orzammar. Kenna remembered her deft fingers doing it by touch alone each day, humming a song under her breath as she arranged it. As a little girl, Kenna had allowed her mother to do her own less lustrous hair in the same braids. 

Hanelle Cadash was still a beauty, though. Kenna watched her smile, cheeks curling upward, her head inclining to the sound of children’s laughter. That smile, so soft and sweet, made her ache. Made a small part of her want to throw herself into those tender arms and weep like a babe herself. 

Kenna caught her breath instead and approached, half in wonder, as the woman looked up at her escort. She broke into their hushed conversation, rough and unpolished as ever. “Mother?” 

Her mother jumped, shocked, face turning to the sound of Kenna’s voice. She dropped the arm of the scout, reaching out instead with both arms in Kenna’s direction, milky, useless eyes staring ahead sightlessly. 

“I forgot.” Hanelle whispered, tears filling those unseeing orbs. “You always moved like a mouse. Come, where are you? Where…?” 

Kenna reached out to capture one of those fine hands as it searched the air for her. She placed it on her cheek and her mother brought the other up to cradle Kenna’s face in her hands. “I’m right here.” She answered, voice gone harsh with tears she would not shed. Not here. 

Her mother had no such qualms about the water filling her eyes. Underneath the film, they were still the same sharp emerald as her daughter’s. Her hands trembled as she traced her thumb over the curve of Kenna’s jaw, frowning when she encountered the scar running up her neck, a new one. 

“I have missed you.” The older woman confessed. “Every night, I have begged our Ancestors to guide your footsteps.” 

So much for that. She was sure their glorious (or ignoble) ancestors were rolling in their cairns at their roughshod daughter who had humans calling her their Herald. “I’m glad you’re here.” Kenna answered, pressing her own scarred hands over the fine silk of her mother’s touch. 

Safe. Finally. The Dasher’s last hold on her gone, extracted from below to come live in the sun. Somehow, Kenna thought it would suit her gentle mother more than the grit of dust town. “I have a room for you. I hope you like it.” 

“I will love anywhere I am.” Hanelle beamed. “As long as I am here with you.” 

* * *

Kenna made the tea herself. Just the way she remembered her mother liked it. She pointedly ignored the scandalized looks from the kitchen staff when she appeared out of the shadows. They looked even more distraught when she deftly picked up the tray and carried it from the cavernous room. 

She made it halfway across the castle before she found Thom waiting for her at the foot of the stairs leading to her mother’s new room. He unfolded his tall form from where he leaned against the stone with a broad, uncertain smile. “My lady.” He chuckled, indicating the tray. “Allow me.” 

She wanted to do it. She pulled it back to her chest stubbornly and inclined her head up the stairs. “Have you heard?” 

“That the Inquisitor is wearing a smile so radiant the bards across Orlais say she is their only muse?” Thom laughed again, even harder when he saw the flush rise to her face. “I’m glad you’re happy, love. I’m glad she’s here. I had heard… I had heard she was unwell?” 

Unwell? Kenna blinked, confused, staring up at Thom. He grew red under her scrutiny, scratching his beard uncertainly. “She… she has lost her eyesight?” 

Oh. Oh. “She’s blind as newborn nug.” Kenna stated bluntly. “She’s not unwell. She hasn’t been able to see a deep mushroom in the dark since I was thirteen, that’s all.” 

Kenna slipped past him with a smirk as he sputtered, trailing her heels. “I just… I hadn’t realized. I don’t believe you ever said. You’ve hardly spoken of her.” 

That… was fair. Kenna frowned at the tray held steady in her hands before flipping her eyes back to him as he strode up the stairs beside her, pace matching hers expertly. “I didn’t like to. It’s hard. She’s the only family I got and she was… she was far away.” 

“I had been surprised to learn your mother still lived beneath the surface.” Thom stated with a huff. “And you up here.” 

“I came up here to take care of her.” Kenna couldn’t meet his eyes for this explanation. The words burned her throat. “Mother… mother was a noble hunter. Do you know…?” 

He shook his head and she sighed. They emerged into an abandoned hallway and Kenna jerked her chin into one of alcoves. They peeled off to hide themselves in it, like they were preparing to snog. Kenna wished they were preparing to snog. “You can’t think less of her.” She snapped, ferociously protective.

“Love, I won’t.” 

His insistence won her over and she studied the brick wall beside her, pulling the tray into her form even more like it was a shield she could hide behind. “Noble hunters are… pretty women. Girls, really. Casteless from dust town that are… trained to please the deep lords in the soddin’ assembly. The goal is… they give birth to a boy and the lords take the boy, raise him up as their heir. The Carta trains the girls, takes a cut of the presents and wealth that flow her way. Mother… mother didn’t have a son, though. She had me.” 

A boy would have inherited the noble caste of his father. Kenna inherited her mother’s brand. A long time ago, she wailed at the unfairness of it. She was past childishly believing the world should be fair, but it still stung. 

“It wasn’t so bad, though. Mother is sweet. Beautiful. The nobles liked her, kept patronizing her. Then she got sick, and it looked like she wouldn’t recover. She did, eventually, but the fever took her eyes. The deshyrs didn’t want a woman with no son and no eyes.” 

She couldn’t look, but she felt Thom’s kind, sad eyes on her face regardless. “Your father?” He prodded softly. 

Kenna scoffed. “The man who contributed to my existence didn’t do me any favors. I don’t know who he is, and he isn’t my father. I don’t have one.” 

Same as lots of girls in Dust Town. Kenna crashed onward, the confession needing to come out now that the wound had been lanced. “Mother couldn’t earn money, so I had to. I was young enough to train with the noble hunters, and they said I was pretty enough, but I couldn’t… I wasn’t cut out to be a whore. Carta would have let us both starve, except Dasher figured out I was good at stabbing things.” 

So she did. She stabbed her way through dust town, shook down the people who owed him money, rose up to the surface to keep doing his dirty work. All the while knowing she was the only thing between her mother and death. 

“Kenna…” Thom rumbled, dropping one heavy hand on her cheek and pointing her eyes up at his. They were just as understanding as she feared they’d be. “Your mother did what she needed to survive. So did you. And she raised a damn fine daughter.” 

“I should have told you a long time ago.” Kenna admitted in a small, fragile voice. She hadn’t been sure why she hadn’t. Maybe, at first, she’d been too frightened of what he would think. Then after his own secrets were revealed, too scared that she may never see him meet her mother, that they would never pull her from beneath the Dasher’s thumb. “I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t think you need to apologize about that.” Thom brushed his thumb over the brand on her cheek. “Especially not to me.” 

She swallowed, hard. “Would you like to meet her?” She asked, trying to wrestle down the breathless hope she found herself choking on.

“Why do you think I was waiting on you to come up from setting the kitchen staff into a tizzy?” He asked, gesturing to the hallway. “I would be honored to meet your mother, my lady.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blackwall meets Hanelle Cadash.

The door to the solarium stood ajar when they got to it. Thom could hear the faint click of something familiar, although at first he couldn’t place it. It seemed a memory from another time, his boyhood perhaps. Still holding the tray, Kenna bumped the door with her hip. It creaked open, which made the clicking cease immediately. 

“Kenna, darling?” A refined voice called out. “Is that you?” 

“I brought tea, mama.” Kenna stopped in the door, as if she needed to gather her courage before she soldiered on as she always did. Thom stepped after her, bowing to duck through the low door. 

“I could have gotten it.” The older woman had hair that was probably once the same golden honey color as Kenna’s, but had faded with time to a light straw interspersed with bits of white. Unseeing eyes tracked Kenna’s movement by the rattle of the tray. “You must be so busy, Kenna. I cannot be a burden when you are so important-” 

“I’m not important.” Kenna argued, settling the tray on the table in front of her mother with a definitive clash of fine china. “The humans just think I am. Something about soddin’ Andraste.” 

“You’re special to me. My little fire, remember?” The woman’s face broke into a broad, beaming smile. Like sun coming from behind the clouds. “Will you stay? Just a while longer?” 

Kenna never looked softer than in that moment. Her braided hair coming unraveled around her face, all wariness and suspicion vanished as she sunk down onto the chaise next to her mother. “I like makin’ them wait for me, anyway.” 

“Of course you do.” Like she couldn’t resist, the woman’s fingers flew to trace the planes of Kenna’s face, the ones Thom knew so well. He worshiped them the same way, with nothing but adoration. “You’re being safe, Kenna?”

“I swear on the stone.” Kenna’s eyes flicked past her mother to land on him, her small hand reaching up to clasp her mother’s. “I brought a friend.” 

“The man huffing away in the door like a bronto?” The old woman laughed softly under her breath and Thom straightened quickly, holding his own breath. “Are you going to introduce us?” 

Kenna _laughed_. The sound was young, _free_ , and so rare he wanted nothing more than to bask in it. He _never_ heard that sound when she was trapped in Skyhold, only when they were on the road, when she felt she could be herself. 

Thom followed that sound like a sailor enraptured by sirens. He understood why men would dash themselves against rocks for a simple song when something like Kenna’s laugh was enough to ignite him from the inside out.

He stopped in front of the two women, bowing awkwardly. “My lady Cadash. It’s an honor to meet you.” 

The woman’s lips turned up at the corner, an expression that managed to be both artful and welcoming on her face, as if she wore an exquisite mask. Her milky gaze fixed somewhere just to the left, over his shoulder. Kenna patted her mother’s hand gently. “This is Thom, mama. Ser Thom Rainier.” 

The name still sat on him like a curse, but this moment was too important to start out with one more lie. The woman dropped her hand from Kenna’s face and held it out with practiced, polished elegance. “Ser Rainier, the pleasure is mine.” 

Kenna would _never_ hold her hand out for anyone, let alone as if it were second nature, but Thom had spent enough time at court to know what to do next. He took the hand, bending so low towards the short women who were seated that his back ached in protest, and pressed a chaste kiss to pale skin. Kenna rolled her eyes to the ceiling above, but she was still smiling.

The smile dropped in the next instant as someone cleared their throat. Thom dropped her mother’s hand and joined Kenna in glaring at the lanky, awkward young man poised in the doorway. “Inquisitor-” He began,

“I’m busy.” Kenna snapped, turning her head away in clear dismissal, reaching for the teapot. “Tea, mama?” 

“I’m sorry to interrupt, your worship.” The near-beardless youth held his ground with more bravery than sense. “Commander Cullen-” 

“Can shove it up his _arse_ with his sword, shield, and-” 

“Kenna.” The older woman reached out to take the teapot from her daughter. “Please. Don’t let me cause problems for you. Not anymore.” 

For a second, Kenna glared into her mother’s empty eyes, full of simmering rage. “You’ve never caused me any-” 

“We know that isn’t true, Kenna.” The woman said gently. “Go, darling. I’ll be here. Your Ser Rainier can keep me company?” 

The silence fell, choking and heavy, and the lad in the door coughed again. “The Commander apologized, but he said it was urgent.” 

“For the fuckin’ love of my soddin’ ancestors.” Kenna stood in one fluid, motion. She lunged across the room to the boy, who finally had the common sense to move. “Cullen can have ten minutes, and then that’s all he gets the rest of the week.” 

Thom watched her vanish with a rueful chuckle, forgetting the gaze that finally fixed on his face. He didn’t remember until he looked back down and saw eyes, so like Kenna’s under the gauzy white, staring up at him. 

“You’re quite tall, aren’t you?” The woman asked, picking up her abandoned knitting needles in her lap. “But at least you have the start of a proper beard.” 

Thom didn’t know quite what to say to that. “My lady, would you like me to pour you a-” 

“I can pour my own tea.” There it was. Kenna’s steel under the polished exterior. “And please…” 

The woman smiled up at him, nose wrinkling with amusement. “Call me Hanelle, Ser Thom. I’ve heard _so_ much about you.” 

Before Thom could decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing, the woman paused in her knitting, tipping her head to the side. “Or was it Ser Blackwall that was mentioned?” She asked, far too innocently. “It’s so difficult to keep track of these surfacer names.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Do you like dwarves? Me too! Check it out at [@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold](http://cartadwarfwithaheartofgold.tumblr.com)


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